The 18 African illegal immigrants rescued from a cooling container near the Rotterdam harbour last week appeared to have contacted local authorities themselves after they realized the freezing timer had switched on and they couldn’t get out of the closed container anymore which was starting to get ‘quite’ cold.

As the Africans were unable to describe the exact details of the container they were in, it still took police 2 hours to find them after they probed radio masts to locate the mobile phone they received the call from.

Mr Bert Wijbenga, of the Rotterdam mayor’s office explained: “This could have ended badly. The 18 had climbed in Belgium in a container with chocolate on the back of a truck heading to the port of Rotterdam. They wanted to go to the United Kingdom. Things went wrong at the Rotterdam Shortsea Terminals (RST) site in Rotterdam's Waalhaven. The cooling engine of the container turned on and the migrants called the emergency number. The police found them by probing radio masts within two hours after 112 was called.”

A debate in the Rotterdam town hall about the issues of rising immigrant arrests had been requested by ‘Leefbaar’ (“Livable”, a right-wing party) council member Mr Michel van Elck.

The population can clearly see that the number of migrants who want to travel via Rotterdam is increasing. On average, three container climbers are caught daily by the customs police in and around the port of Rotterdam.

Mr Wijbenga claimed that: "the barrier to entry is still very high in Rotterdam."

“There is no increase in the number of migrants in the port. We have as of yet no indication for that. But I am very careful with statistics. ''

Dutch citizens expressed their disbelief online about the rising cases of immigrants being caught in the Rotterdam harbour in Holland and the Antwerp and Zeebrugge harbours in neighbouring Belgium. Both the pending Brexit deadline (the UK will be ‘closed’ as from March 2019) and the closure of the migrant camps in the French port city of Calais have increased the number of illegals trying to cross the Channel via Holland or Belgium.

Editor’s note: It was first reported there were 25 immigrants in the container, police later downgraded that number to 18 and said others were arrested in the parking lot.